CNN’s senior legal analyst explained last night why the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to disqualify Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot violates his due process rights.
Mediaite’s Charlie Nash writes that Elie Honig criticized the court’s explanation, likening it to attempting to fit a “square peg into a round hole.” Honig’s comments differed from those of Robert Ray, a fellow panelist and attorney who defended then-President Trump in his first impeachment trial.
“I think the Supreme Court is going to take this case, and I think the Supreme Court is going to reverse the Colorado Supreme Court,” Honig began. “I halfway agree with Bob, I halfway disagree with Bob. I disagree with him on whether the term ‘an officer of the United States’ includes the president. There’s sort of linguistic exercises you can do either way, but I think it’s worth noting all seven justices didn’t have a problem with all officers of the United States including the president. And also just logically, if you’re gonna have a provision in the Constitution that says anyone who engages in insurrection can’t serve for future office, it would be bizarre if the highest office was exempt from that.”
He added, however, “I do agree with Bob that we have a serious due process problem here because the 14th Amendment itself says that Congress — in Section 5 — Congress has to pass laws that tell us how this works, who gets to decide who engaged in insurrection. Is it a court? Is it Congress? Is it a jury? Is it a judge?”
Honig noted, “The only law that’s still on the books, as Bob said, that Congress has ever passed is the criminal law, criminalizing insurrection, which specifically says if a person is charged and convicted with this, he’s disqualified. That has not happened here.”
He concluded, “Instead, Colorado tried to sort of take this state-level proceeding that’s not really made for this type of insurrection determination and force a square peg into a round hole, and I think that violates Donald Trump’s due process rights, and I think the U.S. Supreme Court’s gonna reverse because of that.”
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